


Mexicali Blues

by flyingcarpet



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Podfic Available, Post-Season/Series Finale, Surfing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-04
Updated: 2010-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-05 19:28:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingcarpet/pseuds/flyingcarpet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he reaches the water he doesn't hesitate, just keeps walking until he can duck his head under and start to swim away from shore, letting the salt and the waves wash away the residue that Neptune's left on his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mexicali Blues

**Author's Note:**

> Logan gen, with Logan/Veronica. Takes place immediately post-S3. Title from the Grateful Dead song. Many thanks to those who helped me with the story, thistlerose, delylah, and ixtoh.
> 
> A podfic of this story is now available [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/357111), by nickelmountain.

Logan packs up a couple of duffel bags and throws them in the back of the Range Rover, bringing only what he will need for months of surfing, leaving his jeans and collared shirts in a hotel storage room with his funeral suit. He puts his wetsuit across the backseat and straps his board to the rack on top.

When he leaves Neptune, he doesn't look back and watch it fade away in the rearview mirror.

\----

The house he rents is small, not much bigger than his suite at the Grand. Its windows face the ocean and let in the light. It feels bright and airy and even with his things stacked in one corner and the old rattan furniture, it feels empty. Logan steps out through the back door and finds himself on a broad porch. In front of him is a small lawn with a couple of shaggy palm trees, then a wide beach and after that, nothing but ocean.

He remembers walking on the beach with Lilly in that clinging gold dress, Duncan and Veronica just a step behind. He thinks about surfing with that reporter who said they were brothers, and sitting on the sand with Piz telling him earnestly that some kids had jobs and couldn't afford to waste time surfing all day. He kicks off his shoes and drops his t-shirt on the porch rail and walks deliberately toward the ocean.

When he reaches the water he doesn't hesitate, just keeps walking until he can duck his head under and start to swim away from shore, letting the salt and the waves wash away the residue that Neptune's left on his skin.

\----

Logan has a lot of money now, and that's something he'll never apologize for. He gets royalty checks for Aaron's movies, and for his mom's as well, stock dividends and investment income and ad revenue from the website thing that Mac's doing.

Veronica's emo boy toy might not think so, but Logan knows he's earned his share of the Echolls money. Every strike of the belt, every tabloid story, every whispered rumor and new bruise that he's endured has earned him that money whether he wants it or not.

That money is getting him the fuck out of Neptune now, away from the unbearable togetherness of Veronica and Piz, away from Neptune High and Hearst College, away from Lilly's ghost and his parents' graves.

\----

Once Logan thought that Lilly Kane was the love of his life. Once it was even true, when his entire life consisted of the Neptune High School Homecoming Dance. Back when he could accept that he wasn't so important to her, when he was okay with looking the other way and not seeing what happened in front of his face.

A lot has changed since then.

That’s basically the understatement of the century.

\----

There’s an old FM radio on his bedside table, part of the furniture that came along with the rental house, and Logan listens to the surf report in the mornings. It’s in Spanish, but it’s kinda soothing and he thinks maybe he’s learning the surf words. He knows the numbers, at least, and can usually tell how big the waves are supposed to be.

He gets up when the sun wakes him, pulls on swim trunks and heads down to the beach. He fastens the Velcro leash to his board around his ankle and paddles into the ocean. There’s nobody else out here but he didn’t bring another board so he can’t lose this one. He stays out on the water for a few hours until he’s too hungry to stay any longer, then he usually has some lunch and a nap and then does it all over again. Sometimes he goes three or four days without talking to a single other person. It gives him time to think. He’s not sure whether that’s good or bad, but there it is. At least it's not Neptune.

Down here in Mexico, the water is warm enough that he doesn't need a wetsuit. It's salty and familiar and comfortable, and he doesn't think of it as the same water that killed his mother. In Logan's mind, it was Aaron who killed his mother as surely as he killed Lilly. It wasn't the Coronado Bridge or the fall from the railing or the impact, and it definitely wasn't the ocean. It is easier to think this now that Aaron is dead. A lot of things are easier in Logan's life now that Aaron is dead.

The Pacific is green and blue and brown; it’s cloudy and murky and not at all like the water in the Mediterranean, where they went on a cruise after Aaron finished shooting one of his movies. The Mediterranean was clear and beautiful and glitzy and fashionable. _Like Lilly_, Logan thinks, even though he knows that Lilly wasn’t really any of those things. He doesn’t know what she was anymore.

The color of the Pacific reminds him of Veronica’s eyes: stormy and cloudy and in-between colors. He thinks about Veronica a lot when he’s out on the water, thinks about her eyes and her voice, about her saying _you’re out of my life_. He thinks about the way it felt to fuck her slow in the king-size bed at the Grand, and to kiss her hard up against the tile wall of the girls' bathroom. But he can think about Veronica anywhere, and when a swell rises beneath him Logan pushes himself to his feet and turns his focus to the curl and flow and momentum of the wave instead.

\----

His cell phone is supposed to work in Mexico, but in reality it’s pretty hit-or-miss. It’s just another way that he’s isolated from the rest of the world. Text messages are the main way he communicates with people now.

He gets texts from Trina about her latest movie (he doesn’t really care, but he texts back encouraging bullshit anyway); random messages from Dick that say things like _sleeping at pi sig 2 avoid dad_ and _golf is ok when ur drunk_ and _1st name basis at 7th veil. sweet._ (at least he knows the guy is alive and okay. He’s pretty much the best friend Logan has right now.); weekly messages from Mac about hit counts and ad revenues. And every once in a while, at carefully spaced intervals, he will get a casual message from Veronica. The first one is a photo of a sign that says _LOGAN CIRCLE_, which he guesses is a place in DC, and after that there are notes about city life or her internship. Nothing serious, nothing emotional, nothing below the surface. It’s just enough to let him know that she doesn’t want him out of her life forever.

He wonders what would happen if he wrote back the things he thinks about, like _floating on my board for hours feels like the rhythm of your waterbed_ or _the ocean is the exact same color as your eyes when you’re angry and I spend all day in it, what does that say about me?_ Mostly, to avoid saying anything he’ll regret, he just takes pictures with his phone and sends them to her: coconuts growing in a palm tree, a crab running across the sand, his surfboard propped against the side of the house.

\----

One day, just as he's drifting off for his afternoon nap, there's a knock on the front door. It's so unusual that he doesn't even consider ignoring it, just goes to answer in his swim trunks and bare feet.

There's a little old lady standing there, and she's holding an ancient cooler, the kind that he and Dick would never take to the beach because it only holds twelve beers. "Tamales," she says, holding out the cooler and flipping the lid back, so he can see rows and rows of foil-wrapped packages.

"Ah, how much?" he asks. There's not much food in the house anyway; the kid who brings him food from the market in town hasn't been by in a couple of days, and Logan figures why not?

"Tree dolares," she says in her very heavily accented voice, and Logan nods.

"Hold on a minute," he says, shutting the door so she can't see that his whole security system consists of keeping his wallet in a drawer in the kitchen. And Veronica said he should be more trusting; he doesn't even lock the front door. If only she could see him now.

He gives the old lady a five, and she gives him three tamales which he sticks in the fridge for later.

That evening, after another few hours of surfing, he brings the tamales out on the back porch with a bottle of cheap beer so he can watch the sun set over the ocean while he eats.

One taste, and his eyes roll back in his head out of sheer bliss.

They are the most delicious thing he's ever eaten in his entire life. The cornmeal is moist and crumbly, the meat tender and perfectly seasoned. He washes it down with cold beer, and it's food heaven.

The Pacific reflects the sunset, the clouds on the horizon are a vivid pink, palm trees sway in the breeze, and Logan curses himself for only buying three.

\----

Logan tries very hard not to think about what could happen between him and Veronica in the next year, but he's on the water every day and there are not many things to do besides watch the waves and think.

He could go back to Neptune, find her still with Piz, and spend his entire sophomore year watching her with Mr. Safe-and-Bland, drink himself to sleep every night and end up with liver poisoning.

Another possibility (almost as good): he could return to Neptune and find her with a different guy. He knows what'll happen then: the guy will do something, or say something, or just have a weird look to him. Logan will be forced to beat the shit out of the guy, and he'll really enjoy it. Veronica will give him that disappointed look and cross her arms over her chest and tell him to get out of her life. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Or (a better option) he could just stay here and live by the ocean off Aaron's residuals forever. It's very cheap to live in Mexico, and Aaron made a lot of money on all those shitty movies. It would last for a long time. Plus, he'd never have to see Veronica with another guy. It's an appealing idea.

Maybe the tamale lady will turn out to be his fairy godmother and magically gift him with the ability to not do everything wrong and fuck up every single damn thing in Veronica's life. Bippity-boppity-boo, he'll be the kind of guy that doesn't get bent out of shape when his girlfriend puts a tracker on his car or bugs his phone or whatever. Total personality transplant. It could be good. Veronica managed to be happy with a heavily medicated Duncan who couldn't care about spying, untrusting girlfriends. Duncan was also not a major-league fuckup. At first. Then again, that didn't work out so well in the long run. This fairy godmother option is probably not the most practical.

He doesn't let himself consider the one thing he actually wants, what he's been craving every day since she asked him about Madison for the first time and stormed out of his suite, but it's always there in the back of his mind.

\----

He's been there for two weeks (or maybe three, the days seem to run together) when his phone rings in the middle of the night and wakes him out of a sound sleep.

The room is dark and the world seems fuzzy, and he almost knocks the phone off the nightstand before he manages to grab hold of it. When he blinks away the fog from his vision, he reads the caller ID display and it says _VERONICA MARS_, and Logan can't breathe for a moment.

He flips the phone open and croaks out her name in a voice that's rusty from sleep and solitude.

"Veronica?"

There's no answer, but mixed with the static he can hear movement on the other end of the line.

"Veronica? Are you there? Are you okay?" He's wide awake now, thinking of a hundred different scenarios that might mean she can press 'send' but is in too much danger to talk, and he's cursing himself for being four thousand miles away from her, too far to come to her rescue.

Then he hears talking and laughing, a hubbub of movement, and he hears her voice as if at a distance, ordering a cup of coffee. The clock on his nightstand reads _4:38 am_, and when he does the math he realizes that it's morning there and she's probably on her way to her internship.

The call was nothing, Logan tells himself, just an accidental dial from the bottom of her purse. Still, he stays on the line and listens until her phone disconnects.

\----

The board he's riding is the same one he had with him in Alta California. Same sun, same ocean, same Logan. But somehow the water's warmer and the light is brighter here. The waves are definitely bigger: that's the real reason he drove all this way, after all.

The best part, though, is the view. When he's out on the water and he looks back toward shore, he doesn't see the place where the bum fights were, or the parking lot where Weevil broke his headlights or the bridge where his mother jumped. He doesn't have to see any of the thousand and one places in Neptune that bad things happened to him (or with him or because of him).

Sometimes the ocean was the only place in Neptune that was bearable at all. This little hacienda is a new place, an empty place without memories filling it up. The waves don't have to be anything here but what they are, perfect little swells and curls and rhythmic tides throwing themselves against the shore without end.

\----

Sometimes he thinks he's to blame for pushing Veronica away, for keeping secrets, for fucking Madison, for being the enormous jerk she used to say he was.

Sometimes he thinks Veronica's the one at fault, for never trusting him enough (at all), for being so goddamned stubborn, for not caring about her own safety.

Other times, he thinks it's someone else's fault: her dad never liked him, Lilly's ghost was always between them, she was hung up on Duncan.

But he knows that's not really true. He shared that suite with Duncan for months, and it was torture knowing what they were doing in there, but he could never hear them. When he was with Veronica, though, he'd made her scream his name, make her come until she cried, hold out until she begged. Dick had to sleep with his iPod on in the next room, and he bitched about it all the time. At least in one area (the bedroom, the couch, the floor, the shower and the kitchenette of the Neptune Grand Presidential Suite), Logan had Duncan beat.

He knows, objectively, that he told Veronica on the night of the alterna-prom that they were epic, and he knows that she must've believed it or she wouldn't have come back to him the next day (so he could fuck everything up for the 487th time). But what does "epic" mean, really? Does it just mean they're doomed to try this over and over again, only to fail every time?

He thinks all that failure might be worth it, if they could manage to actually get some time in between the fighting. But that's a pretty big 'if.' The decent times in between have been getting shorter and shorter over time, until it seems like all they do is fight with each other.

\----

The tamale lady comes back, and Logan buys her entire stock. "Muy delicioso," he tells her, and she pats him on the arm with her withered hand, and beams at him like the kindly grandmother he never had.

\----

Outside his window, the waves crash softly against the shore in a familiar tempo. It's the soundtrack of Neptune, too, but there it's layered with cars and bars and thousands of people living side by side. Here, the only other noises are the palm trees rustling in the wind and a couple of frogs croaking. The night air is warm and Logan can hear it all through his open window.

He lies awake and looks up at the stars; without city lights to compete, it seems like there's twice as many.

Mexico has more of a lot of good things: more stars, more waves, more freedom. There's less here, too: no prying cameras, no condescending professors, no unhappy ghosts.

These thoughts lead down a path that he'd been unwilling to follow before, but for once he lets himself think it. What if he stayed here? He could leave all those prying eyes and bad memories behind, and replace them with croaking frogs and thousands of stars. It's more than a little tempting; a part of him wants it so bad that he knows the idea's been in the back of his mind all along.

\----

Logan's learned something about himself since that day at the Camelot when he first tasted Veronica, when bruised his knuckles bloody for her, when he kissed her and then she ran away. Since that day, she's always on his mind. There's never been a day when he hasn't thought of her, when he hasn't wanted her. He's learned that it'll always be that way for him.

Veronica -- or possibly just the idea of her -- will always be in his mind, one way or the other.

He'll always have her there, in his thoughts. Does he really need more? If he stayed in Mexico, if he didn't have to fight against Neptune every minute of every day, would the memory of her keep him going?

\----

It’s been over a week since Logan actually spoke to another person. The boy who brought his groceries came while he was out surfing and just left the things on the kitchen counter, the tamale lady hasn’t been by, he’s already paid his landlord… and that's the sum total of people he actually knows in this country.

Pathetic.

That afternoon, instead of heading back out to the ocean Logan climbs into his car and heads inland toward town.

The road is uneven and full of holes; for once he’s glad he has the Range Rover and not just because of the surfboard rack. The tires kick up dust that billows up in the rearview mirror, but Logan drapes one arm out the open window and soaks up sun as he drives.

He gets into town and parks his car amongst the dusty old Buicks and Chevys parked along the streets. There’s no real reason he’s there, so he walks up and down the street, nodding and smiling to people who don’t speak his language, and browsing in and out of stores. He buys some huarache sandals, and a couple really tacky shot glasses, and a bag of mangoes. He drops the stuff in his car and steps into a cantina nearby.

His plan is to drink one beer, and then go back to his house, where he can be alone with the ocean. But there’s a soccer game on the little tv, and a waitress in a soft white dress with red flowers embroidered on it who keeps smiling at him, and somehow he doesn’t leave. Instead he starts cheering for what must be the home team and loses count of the beers he drinks.

"Mas cerveza, por favor," he says to the waitress as the game is winding down, the home team two goals ahead. It's about all the Spanish he knows. She grins at him and gives him an appraising look from under long dark lashes. Some ideas don't need a common language to be understood, and Logan gets the idea right away.

The announcers on the tv are shouting and the other patrons are slapping each other on the back and getting up to leave, so the game must be over, but Logan is paying no attention. His eyes are riveted on the waitress, who is coy and full of promises at the same time. "Hmmmm," she says, tapping one finger to her cheek, her pose mocking deep thought even though Logan can't understand a word she says. "Puede que haya mas cerveza en la bodega. Vamos a ver."

She pulls him through a door into some kind of stockroom, and kisses him there surrounded by dried beans and empty kegs. She has brown skin and shiny brown hair, and a supple, curvy body, and she’s like the complete opposite of every girl he’s ever been with in Neptune. It’s actually a huge relief to kiss someone without thinking of Veronica or what it will do to her or what she will think, just because he wants it and she wants it and that’s all there is.

So they kiss and fumble around, touching and laughing with all their clothes on but pushed a bit out of place. There’s no overwhelming need driving him, no fiery all-consuming passion, but it’s fun and it feels good and he tells himself that’s enough.

When he comes into her hand, rough from working for a living, he buries his face in her dark hair and doesn't feel anything except the blood pounding in his ears. She says something in Spanish but he doesn't understand, so he zips up his pants and kisses her on the cheek and walks out the door.

\----

He thinks about Veronica, and how they’ve always been able to hurt each other worse than anyone else. She knows every tender spot and always manages to strike just at the worst time, to inflict the most damage. Being with her is usually more painful than the alternative, even if the alternative is to run away to Mexico and hole up away from everyone he knows for an entire summer.

And yet. And yet he can’t seem to stay away from her. When they’re together, none of that inevitable pain and suffering matters in the least. If anything, the low points make the highs seem higher, the sweetness sweeter.

No one can hurt him like Veronica, but no one makes him feel the rush that she does either, like his heart’s about to beat out of his chest. He keeps going back to her, like an addict returns to his needle, like a man dying of thirst returns to water. This all might be easier if he knew which analogy actually fit their situation, if she's the thing that's keeping him alive or the one that's killing him. Either way, he can't get enough and he can never find the strength to walk away.

He leaves the bar and drives along the dusty roads that lead to his little house, thinking about Veronica and what he would give to have her here, now. It wouldn't be calming and comfortable and easy like making out in a storeroom with a girl whose name he doesn't even know, but that doesn't really matter. Even if she's bad for him, even if she's the drug and he's the addict, he needs Veronica in his life.

_This isn’t the end,_ he says to himself, and he doesn’t know if that’s a statement of fact or a deluded pipe dream. Maybe it's both.

\----

He doesn't really think of Parker at all.

\----

"Hey Logan, it's Mac. Guess you're probably out catchin' some tasty waves. Can you call me for a minute? My number -- oh, I guess you have my number already, huh? Anyway, call me."

Logan puts the phone down and goes to take a shower, sure that the call is about some random detail of their T&amp;A websites, which are turning out to be pretty profitable. So it's not until a couple hours later, when he's sitting on the back porch with his board and a tub of Sex Wax that he thinks to call her back.

"Hello?" she picks up on the first ring, and Logan can hear the tv in the background, so he figures he hasn't interrupted anything. He doesn't even check the time on a regular basis anymore, as everything he does revolves around the sun and the waves, not the clock.

"Hey, Big Mac. What's happening in the world of internet commerce?"

"Internet commerce? Oh, the website is fine. Actually I'm duplicating the site and setting up another one for pictures of kittens. Expand our demographic. But that's not what--" She lets out a very un-Mac-like squeal into the phone, and then there's a soft giggle that's muffled as though she's put her hand over the phone, and she says, "stop it," to someone, in the way girls do when they don't mean that at all.

Ah, young love. So Logan did interrupt something. He wonders if she's still with that nerdy guy that sells the tests at Hearst.

"Logan, I have to go," she says a bit breathlessly. "But I wanted to let you know -- I don't know, this might be weird, but I thought you might--"

Logan rolls his eyes. "Mac."

"Veronica and Piz broke up."

Logan's pretty sure he should act cool right now, and equally sure that his quick indrawn breath ruins the effect of anything he could say. Still, he has to give it a shot.

"And you're telling me this because...?"

"You know me, I'm such a gossip." Then there's another muffled giggle and a male voice in the background asking a question. "Sorry," she says, "I really have to--"

"Go, right," Logan says. "Good luck with the kittens."

"Thanks, I'll--" and then the phone clicks off.

Logan sits and looks out at the moonlight reflecting off the ocean for a minute, before going back in the house and pouring himself a glass of scotch.

\----

Logan always loved Lilly more than she loved him, whether he knew it at the time or not. He would have done anything for her -- would have laid himself down in traffic on the 405 if she asked him to. But Lilly was wild and free, and Lilly would do what Lilly wanted. Even at the time, he knew that was true.

Since then, he's come to see Lilly in a different light. She was no blushing schoolgirl; she was more like a ticking time bomb.

Lilly taught him a lot of things, some of them after her death. She taught him how to go down on a girl, and the true pain of heartbreak. From Lilly, he learned that women love little surprises and that love isn't always a two-way street. He discovered for the first time the thrill of love, the rush of sex, and the jolt of rejection.

The people you love let you down, and it was Lilly Kane who first showed him that.

Veronica is not Lilly Kane. She was Lilly's best friend, and if anyone understands the true pain of loving Lilly, it is her. But Veronica is not like Lilly and she never will be. Veronica would never ask him to lie down on the highway, and she never appreciates it when he does, but in her own way she never lets him down.

She has rejected him and left him and cut him to the core more times than he can count, but he finds himself coming back for more every time. She expects so much of him that he's never been able to live up to it, always ends up disappointing her or proving that he's not capable of what she wants. But Logan's life is so twisted and bizarre that this is still the best thing he's ever had: a relationship in which he never seems to measure up.

Veronica has these high expectations of him, but no one else has any expectations at all. She makes him want to try, and the feeling is addictive.

She leaves him every time, but she always leaves him wanting more.

And despite it all, Logan knows that he does want more. It's stupid and probably self-destructive, but he can't stop thinking about Veronica and wanting her, wanting desperately to see and touch and taste her.

\----

The palm trees rustle in the wind overhead, uninterrupted by popping flashbulbs or angry voices. Logan lies back on the beach and thinks about the waitress at the cantina and her rough hands, the way she smiled and looked him up and down. He thinks about the way she spoke to him in Spanish, chattering away like the morning weatherman, and wonders what she said. He thinks about tamales and room service, his little creaky wooden porch and the concrete balcony at the Grand. He knows he'd be better off here where he can relax and surf and get away from the ridiculous drama of the last nineteen years.

He's never been one for smart decisions, though.

\----

There are less than three weeks left of the summer, three weeks before his lease on the house is up and he has to decide what the hell to do next. The memory of the penthouse's smooth concrete and shiny steel fixtures seems completely alien and bizarre compared to the clean white walls of his little cottage, the deck and the plants and the sound of the ocean.

He’s not ready to go back to that life yet, the one where he lives in a hotel and eats room service instead of fresh mangoes, where he throws parties for people he doesn’t know and goes to class instead of floating on his board for hours, feeling the tides ebb and flow beneath him. Still, he’s just starting to think that it might be nice to talk to someone in English for once, speak his native language without having to repeat himself six times in smaller words, when he gets the text message from Dick.

_dads locked up. on way 2 mexico. send directions._

Logan laughs out loud. He's been sitting around on the beach wondering if he should go back to Neptune, and instead Neptune comes to him. He texts directions back, then drives into town to pick up steaks and beer.

\----

"Dude," Dick says when he walks in the door, "Duuude."

Logan is so glad to hear someone speaking regular California English that he almost hugs the guy. But it's Dick, so he doesn't. He just nods, and says, "I know, man." And he does know. If anyone's family history is as fucked up as Logan's, it's Dick's.

He cooks steaks on the grill, and they eat them sitting on the back porch and looking out at the ocean, not really talking at all. Dick has some Jack Daniels and they drink right out of the bottle, passing it back and forth between them. Half the bottle is gone before they talk about anything more than the waves, the weather, or the women of Mexico. Logan's gotten used to not talking after weeks alone.

Finally Dick says, "My dad bought me a house."

Logan laughs a little, because he used to have a house, too. Now all he has is a sterile hotel suite that he inherited from Duncan fuckin' Kane, fugitive from justice.

"Was gonna live at Pi Sig, but I guess I'm not," Dick says, a little morosely. He takes another swig from the bottle. "Least it's close to campus."

Logan takes the bottle from him and swallows a mouthful. "Need a roommate?" He might be going back to Neptune, but that doesn't mean he has to keep living in that concrete penthouse. Maybe it's time to make a change more lasting than a road trip.

"Already moved your shit in there, dude."

Just like that, they've planned out the next year. Logan puts the cap back on the bottle and sets it on the porch railing, then leans his head back against the side of the house and looks up at the rough wood ceiling, painted a bright turquoise blue.

\----

Logan's been out on the water for at least an hour before Dick stumbles out of the house with his board under one arm and paddles out to join him.

"Dude," he says, when he's positioned himself about six feet away. "Those are some fuckin' excellent tamales you got in there."

"D'you leave any for me?" Logan asks. Never mind that there were about a hundred of them in the fridge the last time he checked.

"Couple," Dick says, and grins, and then a pretty little swell starts to crest into a wave and they stop talking.

The ocean pulls his board along, and Logan does his best to come along for the ride. Off to his left, he hears Dick let out a whoop of excitement, and it's just the same as a hundred times before, a thousand mornings waking up early and heading out to the beach before class, of weekend trips and summer afternoons and those days when there was just no way that Neptune High was gonna drag him away from the waves.

Some things, Logan thinks, never change. And for once, that's a good thing.

\----

There are less than three weeks left before classes start at Hearst, but Logan doesn't bother to lie to himself and say that's why he's packing up the truck and heading back to Neptune. Veronica will be returning from her twelve weeks at the FBI in just a few days, and if Mac is right, she's single again. That doesn't mean that she'll want to get together, of course -- there are no certainties with Veronica Mars. But Logan thinks that after a summer of peace, he's ready to risk some pain for the chance to feel that rush again.

Dick just laughs and says, "Fuckin' Neptune, man."

Passing through the border, a couple bored-looking cops ask for his ID and raise their eyebrows at his last name, and just like that he's gone from a random surfer to someone with a Name. He's contraband-free and so they wave him through, and he drives north wondering if he's made the right decision.

The grit and grime of Neptune took a long time to wash off, but it'll be back soon enough. There are people speaking English on the radio again, and people waiting that would like nothing more than to take Logan Echolls down a notch or two. There will be classes and obligations and painful memories around every corner. But maybe if he tries, he can find one good thing to carry him through.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Mexicali Blues](https://archiveofourown.org/works/357111) by [nickelmountain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickelmountain/pseuds/nickelmountain)




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